Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents marched in protest on the 19th anniversary of the financial hub’s return to Chinese rule on Friday as tensions simmer against Chinese authorities over the abductions of Hong Kong booksellers.

Some waved banners criticizing Beijing for the cross-border abductions as acts of a “totalitarian” regime, as well as calling for the release of leading dissidents, chanting for democracy and for Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying to step down.

Several hundred scuffled with police outside Government House, with police using pepper spray to keep them back. Organizers said 110,000 people took part in the march, while police put the figure at 19,300.

[…] The city has been unnerved over the past year by the disappearances of five booksellers who specialized in works critical of Chinese leaders. One of the men, Lam Wing-kee, who was detained for eight months by Chinese agents and released last month, criticized Beijing for “violating Hong Kong’s rights” through illegal cross-border enforcement operations.

The tactics have raised fears of Communist Party rulers in Beijing eroding the so-called “one country, two systems” formula, granting Hong Kong a high degree of freedom and autonomy since its 1997 return from British to Chinese rule. [Source]

“Lam Wing Kee is facing a serious threat and is forced to not attend the rally,” said protest leader Lau Shan-Ching, who spent 10 years in a Chinese jail as a prisoner of conscience.

The march organisers said Lam had pulled out because he had been tailed in recent days.

“He had observed that he had been followed by strangers in the last two days. He got greatly annoyed about his personal safety so he decided not to come today,” pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho told reporters.

“Mr Lam has reason to be scared that this may be people from the mainland,” Ho added. [Source]

When Lam crossed the border on June 14, he cancelled his missing person case and stated that he did not require any assistance from the government or the police – the same as the other returned booksellers.

But in a surprise press conference two days later, he revealed that he was kidnapped in Shenzhen last October, then detained and ill-treated for eight months by a “special unit” separate from official mainland police.

Lam told reporters that he was asked to return to Hong Kong at the order of the Chinese authorities to retrieve a hard drive containing sales records from the bookstore. However, according to Lam, he was touched by the Hongkongers who marched in the street for the booksellers and decided to turn back at the Kowloon Tong MTR station on the way to the mainland.

[…] Since Lam’s revelations, his colleagues at the Causeway Bay Bookstore and his girlfriend in the mainland have separately accused him of lying and using them to run his banned books business. Lam said that he would not reply to or rebut these claims for the sake of his girlfriend and his friends. [Source]

Director Wang Guangya of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, speaking in Beijing, attacked Lam for “publishing books in Hong Kong attacking the mainland’s political system and then selling them on the mainland”.

“The books they publish aren’t about Hong Kong affairs … but about the mainland’s affairs. He publishes … books in Hong Kong and brings them back to sell on the mainland. This is his understanding of ‘one country, two systems’ – this ‘one country, two systems’, we’d rather not have it,” Wang said.

The veteran Beijing official also denied having ever heard of the mysterious “special central investigative unit” that Lam identified as his “abductors” when he was detained after crossing into Shenzhen last October.

[…] “It was Wong’s remarks which destroy the principle of ‘one country, two systems’,” he said. [Source]